Parliamo in ITALIANO!

Oo-fa = uffa = Uff

Bene deeg = benedica = [May God] bless

Cornuto= "horned" = cuckhold

sauce and sausage were said in English: they would be salsa and salciccia.

"A fata a vota" beats me.

Ivrea, the one place in italy I didn't like!

Sauce in east coast "Italian American" is red meat sauce. Not white sauce or marinara or any other kind of sauce. Never said salsa.

Yep. East coast/Italian- It's a language of it's own!. Pronouced as Italians speak in the south, I presume with some blending of American East Coast English.

Sauzeech= salciccia.
Cappicolla is pronounced Gabbagool.
Cannolli=Ganole.
Rapini= Broggoli Raab.
Pizza=Peetz.
Mannicotti=Man-ee-goat
Mozzarella- Moodz-a-rell
Bash-u-zell-Basement
Oosh-pi-tahl- Hospital

Ospedale!

Ospedale!

Is Ospedale how you really say it?

Si, l'ospedale degli Innocenti in Firenze, per esempio, era conosciuto (essere) l'edificio primo di Rinasciamento.

Back in italian class, I used to have forty or fifty things marked off in red on a given assignment, so never trust me. But I loved every minute of it.

I eventually learned to write compositions in many tenses at a time, and got A's (other people must have had sixty red marks), but it was all too much for my particular brain to be able to synthesize and speak that way, even with the forty red marks. I always wanted to speak more complexly than I could formulate off the cuff.

I also would throw in fake italian in lieu of leaving total blanks...

Surely I should be punished with a year in Lucca...

Here is my illiterate translation. The Hospital of the Innocents in Florence is exemplary it's architecture is a great example of the rennaisance era.


How'd I do?

Well, it depends on how I did. What I meant was that it was known to be the first renaissance building. (Not entirely sure that was true, don't know when Bramante's Tempietto was built, bla bla bla) but it was built by Brunelleschi after he and Donatello (I think) went down to Rome and started drawing the remnants of classical Rome.

Others here know much more than I do, fbaezer for one, and a couple of posters from the phillipines, Ricardo Tizon. and...

Hey, we may learn something here!

Judges??

Fealola, I took italian classes at ucla extension on saturday mornings for a few years. Wonderful experience, still have friends from the classes, including the teacher who I stay in touch with. Very satisfying to my kind of mind. Still, I should have taken one of those intense three day conversational communication courses (perhaps ten times, then I might have gotten it).

Going there and living for a while would do the job, though.

I did spend a month there in '99, going to several cities to see non-famous piazzas. I managed to get along, had a fine time by myself. Some of the best times were going through art museums that were not on the art track, so that I would be the only visitor, and the museums would have someone accompany me, ostensibly out of courtesy but also to see that I didn't slash the paintings, and thus the well-suited administrator and I would go through the rooms. We would start out politely and then I would try to engage them, and they would sort of light up, and we would get into which were our favorite paintings in each room and why, the administrator in at least one situation having as bad a command of english as I had of italian.
Great fun.

Sigh. Someday... I'd really like to rent a house in Italy and spend some time. I've heard many stories of people who have gone there and were treated warmly. They all went off the beaten path also.

I have a couple of Italian friends here in London, one Venetian the other Milanese.

They have tried to explain to me the finer points of swollen balls and balls full of milk. I think the word they use is "corleone" (may be spelled wrong) but all the expressions seem to relate to frustration.

I just realised that my boss uses the expression "balls-aching" to describe anal levels of detail demanded by certain clients...so the Italians are not alone!

Corleone, a certain town in Sicily with some renown as a family in a movie, and some renown relating to certain connections, of which I have no personal knowledge.

osso,

I know about those ones. Apparently the town of Corleone has become a pilgrimage site for lovers of the films, who find a town as bleakly sun-drenched as the Scicilian scenes in the movies.

Pietro della Cucina:
Not "corleone", but "coglioni": testicles.

Ossobucco:
Sei molto brava, veramente.
Pochissimi sbagli.

"Si, l'ospedale degli Innocenti in Firenze, per esempio, era conosciuto (essere) l'edificio primo di Rinasciamento."

It happens to me in English, and in Italian, too. Prepositions are the hardest.

According to me, -but don't trust me 100%, Italian is not my mother tongue- the correct phrase would be:
"Si, l'Ospedale degli Innocenti a Firenze, ad esempio, era conosciuto per essere il primo edificio del Rinascimento".

Thanks, fbaezer! I think your right about ad Firenze, I always mess up on IN, and about Rinascimento, eek, I have always misspelled it. On per esempio, that's how I learned it and my dictionary uses it for 'for example'.

I was tought that when a place is public, you use the preposition "in".

Vado in piazza.
Ci vediamo in ristorante.
Ero in strada.

And when the place is private (or semiprivate), you use the preposition "a". Same, if a verb follows the preposition.

Sono a casa.
Andiamo al cinema.
Devo andare al aeroporto.
Vado a fare la spesa.

But then I found there were several exceptions to this "rule". The main ones: the office, and the difference between (equally public) cities and countries:

Sei in ufficio?
Abito a Roma.
Sono andato in Germania.

The "a", "ad"; "e" "ed" and "o" "od" differences are part of the Italian tendency to make the language sound good. You use the "d" termination if the next word starts with a vowel.

Anna e Marco si piaciono.
Marco ed Anna sono fidanzati.

I've seen the d used after e and a but wasn't taught it, hmmm.

Mille Grazie, fbaezerissimo!